Quantum Monte Carlo Methods in Condensed Matter Physics

David M. Ceperley

Naoki Kawashima

Recent developments in Monte Carlo methods for condensed matter physics are reviewed with the emphasis on the world-line Monte Carlo methods and their applications to quantum spin models.

Bing-Nan Lu, Ning Li, Serdar Elhatisari +3 more

While first order perturbation theory is routinely used in quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) calculations, higher-order terms present significant numerical challenges. We present a new approach for computing perturbative corrections in projection QMC calculations. We demonstrate the method by computing nuclear ground state energies up to second order for a realistic chiral interaction. We calculate the binding energies of several light nuclei up to ^{16}O by expanding the Hamiltonian around the Wigner SU(4) limit and find good agreement with data. In contrast to the natural ordering of the perturbative series, we find remarkably large second-order energy corrections. This occurs because the perturbing interactions break the symmetries of the unperturbed Hamiltonian. Our method is free from the sign problem and can be applied to QMC calculations for many-body systems in nuclear physics, condensed matter physics, ultracold atoms, and quantum chemistry.

Paola Gori‐Giorgi, ALESSANDRO FEDERICO, Giovanni B. Bachelet

Romain Chessex, Massimo Borrelli, Hans Christian Öttinger

We present an alternative approach to the study of equilibrium properties in many-body quantum physics. Our method takes inspiration from density-matrix quantum Monte Carlo in dealing with the sign problem and incorporates additional features. First of all, the dynamics is transferred to the Laplace representation where an exact equation can be derived and solved using an evolution step that, unlike most Monte Carlo methods, is not a priori physically bounded. Moreover, the spawning events are formulated in terms of two-process stochastic unravellings of quantum master equations, a formalism that is particularly useful when working with density matrices. Last, our approach is perturbative in nature, with the free part being integrated exactly and, as such, the convergence is greatly accelerated when the interaction parameter is small. We benchmark our method by applying it to two case studies in condensed-matter physics, perform some ground-state calculations, show its accuracy, and further discuss its efficiency.